The present invention refers to supports for casks, of special application in large wine cellars, to allow said casks to be grouped together, stably supported in a lying-down position, and without having to bear the weight of those placed on top of them, as the support system is modular and each support is fundamentally conceived to hold a pair of casks placed side by side, and only the supports, in their joined position when they are stacked, bear the weight that is above them, while the casks bear only their own weight.
The purpose of the invention is to succeed in stacking the aforementioned supports so that the casks are positioned in staggered, parallel rows, with the resulting improvement in accessibility to each one of them, both for cleaning as well as for decanting their contents, with no need to move them, at the same time as a substantial improvement is achieved in the esthetic aspect of the wine cellar, while the casks are arranged in a manner similar to the conventional one.
The purpose of the invention is also to achieve maximum structural simplification of the support, and finally, easy mobility of the casks inside their respective housings, in other words, within the supports, by means of rotating the casks on their own imaginary axes.
In large wine cellars, the process of aging wine in casks is done by grouping them together or stacking them in a lying-down position, in other words, with their bases placed in alignment with vertical planes so that the bottom level of casks rests between pairs of beams placed parallel to each other on the ground, appropriately wedged to prevent them from shifting and to thus achieve a stable positioning of the corresponding casks.
The next levels of casks are formed by resting them on these, in the spaces between them, in other words, so that they are staggered, always chocking them with wedges and stacking them as high as necessary, with the logical limit being the height of the wine cellar.
This stacking system, which is the one that is commonly used in large wine cellars for aging the wine, presents a series of problems and drawbacks, which are the following:
A lack of safety as far as the stability of the casks is concerned, as said stability is achieved exclusively by means of the wedges, and if they should give way, logically the casks may slide, or in other words, a collapse of the stacks may take place, with the consequent risk of accident for the people who may be working inside the wine cellar, in addition to the economic cost that is involved.
Casks stacked on top of each other to form levels are difficult to handle.
Casks located in the lower levels must bear the weight of all the upper levels. Obviously, a cask is manufactured taking into account the function it will perform and the load of its contents when it is full, and so the casks are not usually conceived to bear great weights; thus when they are stacked, and in accordance with what was previously stated, they can become deformed and even damaged.
Trying to eliminate this problem, the applicant himself is the owner of the Spanish utility model with application number U9801070, consisting of a support for casks formed by a rectangular structure, made with longitudinal pieces and crosspieces, on which rods are established on which the casks rest, and coming out of this structure, which constitutes the base of the support, there are stanchions or posts at each of its vertices, which constitute the spacing elements on which the platform or structure belonging to the support which is immediately above rests, when the necessary stacking of the supports, and consequently that of the casks, takes place.
In accordance with the construction of this utility model, the stanchions or posts corresponding to the superposed supports are lined up with each other, and so are the casks, so that if one is trying to achieve optimal use of the available space, the fact that the superposed casks are very close to each other hinders access to them, both for their periodic cleaning and for the customary decanting of wine contained in one of them to a lower position, as access to their openings is drastically reduced by this close proximity. This means that for such actions to be satisfactorily carried out, it is necessary to temporarily unstack the casks, with the resulting negative economic impact that this implies.
The support for casks that the invention proposes, starting from a basic construction similar to that of utility model 9801070, has been appreciably improved in order to solve the problems that were previously stated.
To do this, more specifically, the characteristics of the new support focus on the fact that, in addition to the four stanchions or posts at the vertices of the base structure, which can still be disassembled or folded to minimize the space occupied by the support when it is not in use or for its storage, it incorporates two other intermediate stanchions, located at the midpoint of its longer sides, i.e., those corresponding to its front and rear faces, with the additional particularity that the means established on the lower face of the base structure to secure the stanchions of the support which is immediately above, instead of being located at the same place as the stanchions of the support itself, are not in alignment with them, but specifically line up with the midpoint of each one of the two halves defined by the intermediate stanch ions, in other words, lined up with the lower polar area of the pair of casks placed on the support.
Thanks to this special construction, when the support system is assembled or stacked, each support is substantially out of alignment in a longitudinal sense both with respect to those above and to those below, which means that the casks are arranged in staggered, parallel rows, or in other words, that the upper polar area of each cask is aligned with the space between the two casks immediately above it, in other words, in a situation which allows optimal accessibility.
The special arrangement of the casks in staggered, parallel rows, in addition to being a substantial approximation of the typical arrangement in which the casks are stacked directly on top of each other, allows greater accessibility to the entire perimeter of each one, both for cleaning operations and for decanting their contents, as was previously stated, to which must be added the additional benefit, also resulting from this arrangement, that the elevation of the stanchions may be appreciably reduced, resulting in better use of the space available.
In accordance with another of the characteristics of the invention and the aim of structurally simplifying the support, it has been foreseen that the aforementioned base structure, from which the also aforementioned six stanchions come out, be replaced by four feet, appreciably prismatic and quadrangular in shape, provided with an upper transverse opening to allow the load arms of a forklift or similar device to pass through, and on the bottom with a receptacle whose opening faces downwards, to form a mortised connection between supports when the latter are stacked, with a frame made up of metal tubes coming out of each foot, the same as the foot itself, a frame whose lower part forms the shape of an inverted trapezoidal isosceles section, of the appropriate dimensions so that the end of the cask can fit inside it, resting on the central part of its side branches; and an upper section made up of a pair of stanchions that come out of the ends of the trapezoidal section and which, being parallel to each other and vertical when in working position, allow free passage of the casks to their resting place and act as spacers between supports, having a rounded upright on their free end so that they can be introduced into the lower receptacles of the feet belonging to the support which is immediately above.
This inner receptacle of the feet tapers upward, with a dihedral profile, for example, and has an opening of considerable dimensions, so that this special shape facilitates the handling of the support using, for example, the aforementioned forklift, as it is not necessary to achieve perfect alignment when stacking the supports; as long as the end of each stanchion is within the opening of the corresponding foot, the upper support will center itself as it descends upon the lower support.
Four frames form part of the support as a whole, one for each one of the four feet: two in front, which are secured to each other at their adjacent stanchions, by welding, for example, and two others in back, secured in a like manner; at the same time, the two forward frames are attached to the rear ones by means of crosspieces located at the level of the union between its trapezoidal sections and its upper stanchions.
In accordance with this construction, the feet on which the support rests allow it to stand perfectly on the ground as well as to form a mortised connection on top of other supports when the latter are stacked; the casks rest directly on the frames which make up the structure itself of the support, with no need for specific means for that purpose; and the typical base platform practically disappears, inasmuch as the means for holding or stabilizing the casks themselves are what basically make up the structure of the support, with the resulting greater accessibility to the upper area of each cask.
Complementing this notable structural simplification and the greater accessibility to the upper area of each cask, in this variation in the embodiment of the support, the characteristic of the first embodiment relating to the arrangement of the casks in staggered, parallel rows when the supports are stacked is maintained.
In either of the two aforementioned cases, and in accordance with another of the characteristics of the invention, it has been anticipated that the casks rest on the support itself by means of pairs of wheels mounted on short arms leaving them freedom of movement, so that, as said wheels are where the cask rests, they allow the latter to be freely rotated on its own axis with minimal effort, thus achieving easy mobility at those times when it is necessary to check the cask, when because of diminution or leakage it is necessary to refill it, to facilitate the removal of the wine during the decanting process, and finally, to allow the cask to be cleaned xe2x80x9cin situxe2x80x9d with no need to move it, as its opening can be oriented sideways or downwards, also with a minimum of effort.
Obviously, said wheels should be strong enough to bear the weight of the cask, and at the same time, made of a material soft enough so as not to mark or damage the cask""s surface, both when it is in a stable position and when it is subjected to a rotating movement.